Within a transportation network, staging areas play a critical role in attempting to ensure that goods are transported throughout the transportation network in an efficient and reliable manner. The term “staging area,” as used herein, refers to any processing or exchange point within a transportation network, including, but not limited to, a delivery hub, a vehicle exchange point, a rail yard, an air terminal, a shipping port, or any other such point through which delivery vehicles, cargo containers and other related items pass. An important aspect of ensuring that a staging area itself operates in an efficient and reliable manner is the need to have systems and methods in place for coordinating the flow of vehicles that haul goods to and from the staging area on a daily basis.
Goods are typically moved throughout a transportation system within various types of container devices, which are transported under the control of a powered unit. A “powered unit,” as used herein, generally refers to any vehicle capable of providing the means to move items or containers from one location to another within a transportation system, such as a tractor, a locomotive, a tug, a van, a ship, or any other such vehicle. A “container device,” as used herein, generally refers to any container-like structure that can be used to hold goods for transport, such as a trailer that is typically pulled by a corresponding tractor along roadways, a shipping or cargo container of a type commonly seen on ships and trains, an air cargo container (sometimes referred to as an “igloo”), or any other such device that can be used to hold goods as they are transported under the control of an associated powered unit.
For example, when a delivery truck arrives at a hub location, the driver of the vehicle preferably needs to be aware of certain information, such as where to drop off the inbound load which he or she is transporting. Typically, the delivery driver also needs to be informed as to whether or not he or she will subsequently be transporting a new, outbound load. If the driver is assigned a new, outbound load, he or she must sometimes be given information on how to identify and locate the particular load within the delivery hub, and on where to go with the load after leaving the hub. In the case of a rail yard, the delivery vehicle may be a train that includes a plurality of freight cars in which each freight car contains one or more shipping containers. When the train arrives at the rail yard, some or all of the containers may need to be removed from the train and placed at particular locations within the yard. Meanwhile, other containers already residing in the rail yard may need to be loaded onto the train so that they can be shipped to a new location. Yet another example can include an air terminal where various types of powered units are used to pull trains of “igloos” (air containers) into and out of a staging area so that such containers can be loaded to and from airplanes.
To ensure that these and other such events occur in an organized and systematic fashion, shipping companies such as UPS® have developed various methods for managing the flow of vehicles and containers at staging areas within a transportation network. For example, one prior art method of coordinating events at a delivery hub involves having a call box or telephone positioned at one or more of the gates associated with the delivery hub. When a delivery truck arrives at the hub, the driver of that truck is expected to use the call box to manually call a dispatch center for instructions on how to proceed. The dispatch center is responsible for providing the driver, via the call box, with the type of information mentioned above, such as where to drop off an inbound load, where or how to locate the driver's next outbound load, and where to go with an outbound load after leaving the hub. One problem with this method is that the process frequently takes as long as fifteen to twenty minutes for each delivery vehicle. In many cases the waiting time for each vehicle can be effectively doubled because a similar process is required for all outbound vehicles.
Another problem which presently occurs at some staging areas is that drivers frequently pull out and leave with the wrong outbound loads. In the current operating environment, unique vehicle identification numbers are typically associated with each delivery vehicle and with each trailer (or container placed on/in a trailer, rail car, airplane, etc.) operating within a transportation network. According to one prior art method, each vehicle identification number is displayed in a human-readable format on a label affixed to an outer surface of each such vehicle (or container). By receiving a vehicle identification number from the dispatch center at the staging area, a delivery driver is able to identify the particular outbound trailer (or other vehicle or container) that the driver is assigned to leave with. When the driver locates a trailer that appears to contain the correct vehicle identification number, the driver pulls the trailer and exits the staging area.
Unfortunately, the manual nature of this process allows for a significant number of transpositional errors, meaning that at some point in the process the proper sequence of numbers and/or letters that make up a vehicle identification number can be misconstrued. Transpositional errors may occur either at the time the driver receives the sequence of numbers (and/or letters) from the dispatch center, or when the driver compares the identification number received from the dispatch center to the sequence of numbers he or she perceives to be on a given vehicle. In either case, if the driver is mistakenly off by one or more numbers (or letters), he or she will most likely end up pulling the wrong load. The real detriment to having a driver pull the wrong load is that the mistake is typically not discovered until the driver reaches the next staging area or other exchange point, which can be hundreds of miles away.
Yet another issue associated with coordinating the flow of vehicles at a staging area is the need to keep track of what and where shipping assets are at a given location. To maintain an inventory of what vehicles and other assets are at each staging area within a transportation network, delivery personnel at some locations are required to go out into the yard at certain times of the day and physically write down the vehicle identification numbers of each vehicle, container or other item on the property. Not only is this a costly way of taking inventory, but more importantly, it only provides an accurate reading of what vehicles or containers are at a particular location as of the last manual reading.
Therefore, a need exists for an improved system and method of coordinating the activities associated with the flow of vehicles, containers and other such items at a staging area that allows for expedited dispatch procedures, that provides a way of detecting when a driver leaves the area with the wrong load, and that provides a means for maintaining an accurate, real-time inventory of vehicles, containers and other such items.